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AN 



ORATION 



PRONOUNCED BEFORE THE 



LITERARY SOCIETIES 



AMHERST COLLEGE, 



&UflUSt 23, 1836. 



BY CALEB CUSHING. 



. i 






j 

BOSTON: 
LIGHT & STEARNS, 1 CORNHILL. 

1836. 






*P 



ORATION. 



Ei$ Jl&rjvag, was the choral strain of the maidens of 
Thrace. Is there a heart, once imbued with classic 
lore, which thrills not responsive to the call 1 Wander 
through the world as he may, it is the ranz des vaches of 
the scholar's affection. In that fairest of the' seasons 
of life, its genial and buoyant spring-time just ripening 
into summer, when the hopes and the aspirations of 
manhood, not yet accompanied with its cares or its toils, 
kindle within us, we bid farewell to the scenes and 
the studies of our youth. We feel the hour of action 
come. Knowledge is to us its own sufficient recompense 
no longer. We plunge into the tide of affairs ; perchance 
to see its troubled waves roll over us, leaving only the 
boiling eddy to mark for a brief space the spot where we 
sink ; or, it may be, with better skill, or happier fortune, 
to bear us onward the voyage of time auspiciously to its 
appointed end. We seek to be useful and happy in our 
chosen walk of life ; we enjoy and we suffer ; we pursue 
riches, power, fame ; we discharge the offices of duty, 
of religion, of love to our neighbor and our God. In 
short, we fulfil our destiny on earth. It is right we 
should. For what avails a mere cloistered virtue, which 



4 



wilts away if the noon-tide sun do but shine upon it, 
which never met and never withstood an adversary 
temptation, and which, it has been well said, " shrinks 
out of the race, where the immortal garland is to be run 
for, not without dust and heat?" — Yet, in after days, 
amid all the crowding thoughts of the present and the 
mottled recollections of the past, there is a cherished 
reminiscence at our hearts consecrated to the scholastic 
shades of our Alma Mater. It is the Diamond of the 
Desert, a bright oasis in the waste of memory. It 
invokes us, by the reverence we owe to good letters, by 
the love of knowledge animating us, that we also go up 
to Athens; that we re-tread with pride and pleasure the 
walks of the Lyceum, and hold sweet counsel together 
once again in the groves of Academus. 

True it is, that, in many of the scenes of active life, it 
is no honor to retain the taste of literary cultivation; 
nay, in some, it is an object of obloquy and reproach. 
If, indeed, letters be cultivated to the abandonment or 
neglect of the higher duties of society, if without fruit or 
advantage to the world, let condemnation fall where it 
belongs. I cannot acknowledge, however, that time is 
unworthily bestowed upon studies, which are alike the 
embellishment of prosperity and the solace of adversity, — 
secundas res ornant, adversis perfugium ac solatium 
prsebent, — which feed the mind with its purest nourish- 
ment, and place before us the noblest models of imitation. 
And for myself I do confess, that I never cease to recur 
with fond emotion to the classic hours of academic life. 
Its memory seems linked with associations of the gran- 
deur of antiquity ; sublimated above the homely tenor 
of our daily existence; full of thoughts hallowed and 



softened by distance into the twilight tints of loveliness 
and grace ; pouring in upon the soul examples of patriot- 
ism and wisdom hallowed by the admiration of succes- 
sive centuries; speaking to the mind's ear, like an echo of 
the glorious accents of that old eloquence, which sounded 
over the earth; summoning before the mind's eye the 
long procession of the great and good of other ages, who, 
though dead, yet live in their works and in their death- 
less immortality of fame. Its feelings, its ideas, its tastes, 
cling to me, as if incorporated with the physical essence 
of being. 

Cherishing such emotions, I come hither to this honored 
seat of learning, escaped for a day from the exacting 
occupations and the passionate contentions of active life, 
with the gladiator's tunic and the sand of the arena, as 
it were, still upon me, to address on this occasion the 
young, the educated young, to whom the world is yet 
untried and comparatively unknown, except as the expe- 
rience of others may render it to their understanding. 
You are dedicated to intellectual pursuits. You do not 
go forth to the world when your academic years have 
past, to fall into the rank and file of ordinary life, but to 
become conspicuous members of society, its teachers, its 
guides, its lights. You inhabit a country, which is press- 
ing forward in the career of prosperity and power with 
the strides of a giant, and which, replete as it is with 
the sharpest incentives to exertion, holds up the great 
prizes of life with impartial hand to the grasp of courage 
and of merit. Aiming to afford you practical instruc- 
tion, suited to the relations of speaker and hearer, I pro- 
pose to offer some illustrations of the uses of popular 
eloquence, adapted to the condition of society and the 



times in which you are destined to move; the dignity, 
the importance, the application of this, among the most 
potent of the modes in which mind acts upon mind. 

If we proceed to analyze these various modes, we per- 
ceive that, independently of the indirect influence of exam- 
ple, association, the institutions, monuments and fashions 
of society, mind acts upon mind, in the first place, by 
the direct control of conduct, as in government, legisla- 
tion, war, and the like means of applying the will of an 
individual, through the exercise of national force, to 
mould the manners and modify the social condition of 
mankind. Instances of this occur in great lawgivers, 
like Solon, Lycurgus, Numa ; in the founders of states 
and empires, like Romulus or Caesar ; in the introduction 
of a new religion, as by Constantine or Clovis, or the 
modification of an old one, as by Henry VIII ; in funda- 
mental social changes operated by public authority, as in 
the example of the cultivation of Russia by Peter, and 
the American and French revolutions ; or in the subjuga- 
tion of a state and the forcible change of its government, 
religion or laws, as in the case of the Roman and Saracen 
conquests in Europe, and the Spanish in America. 

Secondly, it is by the direct intercommunication of 
ideas through the medium of sensible signs of thought, 
especially in speech or in writing. Frequently this is 
accompanied with more or less of authoritativeness, as in 
the instruction imparted by a parent to his children, or of 
a master to his pupil ; in the religious doctrines inculcated 
from the desk or through the press by men invested with 
sacred functions ; in the compositions of popular and 
esteemed authors ; in the newspaper press, that great 
engine of popular impression and every day knowledge ; 



in the speeches of public men, whose respectability, 
station or talents may give reflected authority even to 
opinions not possessed of legal force. 

In each of these modes of action, it is individual mind, 
which impels other minds. Occasionally, there enters 
upon the scene of life a man of transcendent intellect, 
who, lighting upon a happy combination of circumstances, 
or rather placed in it by an all-seeing and all-disposing 
power, changes the whole face of things by the supreme 
force of one mind. Some Bacon, who creates the science 
of nature anew ; some Newton or Fulton, who, as with a 
touch of the enchanter's wand of genius, gives being or 
impulse to a great department of knowledge or art ; some 
Gregory or Luther, who, in the seclusion of his cabinet 
or cell, plans and accomplishes the reform of whole 
nations; some Charlemagne or Napoleon, who revolu- 
tionizes the world. 

But all these are great exceptions to the course of 
things, not the ordinary cases of human efficiency. In 
the bounded circle wherein most men are destined to 
move, the capacity for acting upon society is more widely 
diffused just in proportion as it is less potent in the indi- 
vidual case. And as distinctive, especially, though not 
exclusively, of the institutions of our times, and of our 
own country, the influence of spoken opinions, addressed 
to great assemblies, religious, literary and political, and 
aside from the common forms of scholastic tuition, is one 
of the most marked characteristics of the age. 

When Alexander of Macedon had subdued the great 
Persian and Median empire, and borne his victorious 
arms to the uttermost shores of Asia, — when, lamenting 
that no second world remained for him to conquer, he 



8 



returned to Babylon, drunk with pride and power, and 
master of all the riches of the East, — the wildest projects 
of insane adulation were continually poured into his ears. 
None was more stupendous than that of the architect 
Stasicrates. There stretches out into the iEgeean Sea 
the vast promontory of Mount Athos, which beetles over 
the mariner as he sails past, and at sun-down projects 
its huge shadow leagues off upon the hills of Lemnos, 
darkening over land and sea like a planetary eclipse. 
Stasicrates proposed to carve Mount Athos into a colossal 
statue of Alexander, that should hold a city of ten thou- 
sand inhabitants in its left hand, and in its right a horn 
of plenty sending forth a deep river into the iEgsean Sea. 

What the bold Greek conceived, — a project apparently 
beyond the reach of human agency, extravagant, gigantic, 
Titanian, — even this much, in its effects upon the physi- 
cal exterior and the moral constitution of the world, has 
been accomplished by the intellect of Man. Out of the 
very face of the primeval wilderness, he has raised up a 
form, lofty and majestic in its proportions ; cultured fields, 
populous towns, imperial states, are in the palm of its 
hand ; it pours out a perennial stream of prosperity and 
abundance, to fertilize and enrich the earth; it is the 
sublime personification of that moral and social order, 
that organization of physical strength, animated by a 
great moral and intellectual purpose, which constitutes 
the civilization of Christendom. 

We see it manifest, that, setting aside the great ruling 
power which governs him and the universe alike, man 
is lord of the whole earth. Look at him individually, 
and in his solitary unaided strength, ere the faculties of 
his soul have developed their amazing might, and he 



9 



seems weak, insignificant, when compared with other 
objects on the globe he inhabits. Imagine you could 
comprehend the whole earth, as it revolves, in a single 
inspection, with as it were an all-seeing eye placed in some 
supernal point, overlooking the very frame of creation. 
As the sight extended over the diversified surface of the 
earth, and observed the long chains of lofty mountains 
spread out upon it from pole to pole, river after river 
rolling its waters to the distant sea, and the ocean itself, 
that world of waves, with its surges lashed into fury by 
the storm, — and then paused for a moment, to regard 
man himself in his apparent littleness contrasted with all 
around, — should we deem that he exercised authority 
and control over the material universe ? That when the 
winds rushed forth in hurricane, he could bear up 
against the extremity of their wrath? That he might 
dig himself a path into the bowels of the mountain, in 
search of objects for the gratification of his taste ? That 
he should convert the terrible element of fire into the 
very slave of his wants? And that it belonged to him to 
march in confidence and safety over the bosom of the 
fathomless deep ? Yet, extraordinary, grand, as it is to 
conceive, it is man's prerogative, the privilege which 
intellect imparts to him alone of the inhabitants of the 
globe, to have dominion over the elements of earth and 
sea, of air and fire, so that he may convert them into the 
instruments of his pleasure and the servants of his will. 
For, though in physical properties inferior to so many of 
his fellow inhabitants of the earth, though endowed neither 
with the speed of the dromedary nor the strength of the 
elephant, though unable of himself alone to soar in mid 
air like the eagle, or chase the leviathan of the deep in 



10 



his native element, yet over all these, as over the inani- 
mate objects of creation, has God crowned him with the 
empire of Mind. 

Let us pause to contemplate the operations of that 
marvellous power, before whose invisible presence all 
things on earth bend the knee in obedient homage. Take 
an example in the physical sciences, so as to appreciate 
the force of intellect, which scans and measures the 
movements of the celestial bodies. For how sublime,' 
when we consider it in due deliberation, is the image of the 
" famous Galileo, grown old, a prisoner to the Inquisition, 
for thinking in astronomy otherwise than the Franciscan 
and Dominican licences thought," braving temporal 
power in the confidence of right, yielding up his body to 
the doom of the church, yet, with soul fetterless and free 
as ever, still affirming the grand truth of the revolutions 
of the earth. Eppure si muove ! Or of Herschell in his 
nightly solitude of Slough, sending out his observation 
millions of miles into the illimitable regions of space, 
studying the aspects of those remote, orbs, which, to the 
common sight but dim sparkling dots on the concave of 
the blue sky, are in the eye of science other suns, the 
centres of other systems, dispensing light and life to 
unimaginable worlds. Or of Newton weighing the uni- 
verse as it were in a balance, and unveiling to us the 
mighty agent, appointed to suspend the innumerable suns 
and stars in the liquid ether, and hold them wheeling on 
forever in the spheres prescribed to them by the ordination 
of the Omnipotent and the Eternal. 

Striking as are these exhibitions of the force and 
capacity of mind, it is not, I think, in the abstract or the 
natural sciences, that its uses are chiefly important or 



11 



admirable. Concede whatever of greatness and genius 
you will to the eminent professors of physical or meta- 
physical learning, is theirs the only, the true, the highest 
philosophy ? Oh no. — Ideology, mathematics, astronomy, 
the science of analyzing, combining, comparing, ideas or 
objects, to weigh or decompose the air, to dissect a ray 
of light, to work out problems of algebra, to measure the 
attraction of atoms, to speculate on the origin of ideas, to 
discuss whether matter is mind or mind matter, or neither 
of them either mind or matter, — in short, the knowledge 
of the closet, is the means, not the end or essence, of 
philosophy. For suppose the natural or abstract sciences 
never to be taught : — might not men still study to be 
wise, and virtuous, and happy 1 Yes, indeed. 



Virtue could see to do what virtue would, 

By her own radiant light, though sun and moon 

Were in the flat sea sunk. 



Knowledge in action, wisdom, that wisdom which con- 
sists in the regulation of life to the ends of virtue and 
happiness, cpdoaocpia 6iov xv^^j/tj/?, here is the philosophy, 
which Plato and Zeno taught, and of which they rightly 
regarded the physical sciences, and the theory of the 
mind's operations, not as the chief substance, but only as 
the secondary parts, the aids, and the ministering hand- 
maidens. This, and this only is that divine philosophy, 
which, according to Tully's bold metaphor, Socrates 
drew down from heaven to enlighten the heathen world ; 
and which, after being so long overlaid or pressed aside 
by the crowd of other matters, now, in our own imme- 
diate age, called up again by the general shock of social 



12 



interests and opinions, is resuming its proper station as 
the prime study of christian Europe and America. 

We live and labor to be wiser, better, happier ; happier 
in the possession and enjoyment of wisdom and goodness, 
in the communication of happiness to others, in the pur- 
suit and acquisition of social advantages which are the 
stimulus and the reward of well-doing, in the conscious- 
ness of right, in the enlightened desire that our memory 
may survive us in the approbation of our times and the 
esteem of posterity, happiest in the tranquil anticipation of 
that which is to be in the never ending hereafter of an- 
other life. To these objects, all the science of the schools, 
all philosophy, all teaching, all that wisdom can plan or 
eloquence utter, do perpetually point. There is nothing 
appropriate to this life, there can be nothing, higher or 
worthier, than the well-ordering of society, the regulation 
,of men's conduct, and the bettering of their condition. It 
challenges the especial devotedness of those, who, as edu- 
cated men, blessed with natural or acquired endowments 
superior to what their fellows possess, stand prominent 
for good or for evil example in the eye of the world. 

Providence has filled the world with inequalities of 
character and condition : — physical differences, moral, in- 
tellectual, social differences. One man is an amphibious 
savage upon the deluged plains of the Orinoco, living in 
huts or upon trees in half naked brutality, and gorging 
himself with clay to still the cravings of hunger ; while 
another is clad in purple, pillowed upon silk and down, 
revelling amid the halls of palaces, a Sybarite pained by 
the rumpling of a rose-leaf. Some are the lights of their 
age and the pride of our race — brave, wise, learned, elo- 
quent, virtuous, high-minded — men, who in their path of 



13 



life illumine and quicken the world, like the bright sun in 
heaven irradiating the globe. Others seem dedicated to 
violence and crime, as if, like pestilence or hurricane, 
they were sent only to be the ministers of the vengeance 
of Destiny. To study these differences, to discover their 
source and their remedy, to purify the bad and elevate 
the low, to direct the energies of society to the improve- 
ment of itself, — what a field is here for the loftiest efforts 
of intellect and of eloquence ! 

Society no longer consists of numerous independent 
cities, occupied by freemen devoted to arts and arms, 
with household slaves and predial helots for the chief in- 
struments of productive industry, as in the days of the 
Greeks and the Romans. It no longer consists of great 
barons, with their lawless feudal, following to domineer 
over the timid husbandman or peaceful burgher, as in 
the early times of modern Europe. The social elements 
are now in a state of general fusion and recomposition, 
by reason of the development of the true republican prin- 
ciple, of the political equality of men under and through 
established law, to the end of the greater good of the 
greater number. 

It needs but a glance at the history of the last five 
hundred years, to discern the fact and to understand how 
it came to pass. You see the art of printing diffuse 
knowledge, extend education, generalize intellectuality, 
and thus augment a thousand fold the moral force of the 
mass of mankind. You see the invention of gunpowder 
change the nature of war, converting it into a game of 
skill and of combination, that is, of intellect, in lieu of the 
mere brute force of prowess in arms. You see the dis- 
covery of America imparting boundless scope to the love 



14 

of adventure and of wealth. You witness the effect of 
these things in the general progress of liberty, as it is 
called ; that is, the moral and intellectual, as well as the 
political, independence of the individual man: — devel- 
oped, first in the Protestant Reformation, which emanci- 
pated the mind from the "bondage of the Roman Church j 
secondly, in the English Revolution, which applied the 
principle to the introduction of radical domestic changes ; 
thirdly, in the American Revolution, adapting itself to 
personal liberty and national independence combined; 
and finally, in the French Revolution, which rendered 
the principle European, or co-extensive in its influence 
with the limits of Christendom. 

At the present hour, all the causes indicated are in full 
activity, and acquiring more and more velocity of move- 
ment every minute, like a falling body in space ; in 
addition to which, that progress of social improvement, 
which the press, gunpowder and the mariners' compass 
originally impelled, has gained new intensity from the 
steam-engine, which, in the approximation of distances, 
and in its application to the arts of peace and of war, is 
effecting changes in society only less remarkable than 
those accomplished by the press itself. 

Power, strength, vigor, knowledge, the physical energy 
to do and the indomitable will to dare, have become the 
common property of the universal mass. Our own par- 
ticular institutions are but the practical exemplification of 
the principle, which nature has infused into the hearts, 
and stamped upon the brow of man, — that power shall 
follow upon the capacity to exercise it, and that all may 
seek by worthy means the happiness which all are equally 
entitled to enjoy. It is the charter of human freedom, 



15 



written by no human hands, granted by no human au- 
thority, but communicated by the great God himself, in 
the spark of his own ethereal essence, the emanation of 
his own divinity, the immortal soul which animates our 
perishable frames. 

And why seek to disguise that which it is impossible 
to deny? Popular supremacy was to be, and it is. It is 
a happened fact, which cannot be recalled, and which, if 
it were desirable, it is too late to prevent. Why then, I 
repeat, seek to disguise it ? Rather brace we ourselves, 
to that existing event, which is the inevitable and 
irreversible order of the time. You cannot arrest the 
movement of society. You may place yourself in its 
pathway, but only to be crushed into powder under 
the footsteps of its advancing legions. It is a moun- 
tain torrent rushing downward to the sea. Would you 
dam up its waters in the channel they are wearing for 
themselves? To see them dash away your puny barriers, 
and sweep forth in desolation and ruin over the face of 
the earth ! No : — rather strive to direct them in a fer- 
tilizing stream, giving beauty and verdure to your fields, 
and diffusing health and abundance throughout the land. 
This, and this only can you do : in the onward progress 
of liberty, make yourself frankly of it; labor to purify its 
counsels, to elevate its purposes, to guide its march. 

There is no deep mystery in this matter. Reflect for 
a moment. What is it which forever stirs and agitates 
the human race, drives the perpetual movement of the 
social machine, bands men with men, and men against 
men, raises up hostile armies to fight in mortal conflict 
on the field of battle, convulses nations, overturns or 
builds up empires? Can we discriminate the tremendous- 



16 



agents, which sweep from time to time over the face of 
the moral world, like whirlwind, deluge, or internal fires 
in their action upon the physical world 1 

We perceive, on the surface of things, considerations of 
interest, affection, self-love ; the gratification of passions, 
desires and appetites ; all that great class of motives, 
which, are of an egoistic, interested and personal charac- 
ter. But as these are, in the universal estimation of 
mankind, the less laudable inducements of action, and as 7 
in their influence on great masses of men, they are in the 
long run the less potent likewise, all men have a tendency 
to ascribe their actions, in the relations of social life, to 
•considerations of opinion, conviction, or principle. So 
many of the martyrs of liberty and faith in all ages, — the 
prophets, apostles and saints of old, — the hunted of san- 
guinary intolerance in later times, — they who have dyed 
the scaffold or the sod with their blood in attestation of 
their pride or sincerity of conviction, — all these were the 
victims of a professed principle. The great wars and fear- 
ful revolutions of our own age are signal proofs of that 
overwhelming force of opinion, which, beyond aught else, 
inspires individual men with energy of individual pur- 
pose, and combines them in mighty bodies for the execu- 
tion of some common purpose. It was for opinion's sake, 
to maintain a religious principle, that our fathers aban- 
doned their native land, and all the dear ties and fond 
.associations of home, to seek free scope for the promptings 
of conscience, though it should be in wilderness. It was 
for opinion's sake, to maintain a political principle, that 
our fathers entered upon the war of independence, and by 
inestimable efforts, sufferings and sacrifices, accomplished 
our national revolution. And it is the intensity of the 



17 



sentiment, not its truth or correctness exclusively, which 
gives it power. Indeed, whatever may be the hidden 
springs of conduct, this it is, which all pretend and put 
forward in the front line of contention ; evincing, among 
so many other facts, the sense of right and wrong ever 
prominent in all the combinations of society, and without 
which, indeed, it is plain society could not exist, but 
would be torn asunder by violence or interest, and re- 
solved into elementary fragments. 

In our time, then, and peculiarly in our country, the 
predominant idea, which invigorates every breast, is the 
sentiment of freedom ; it is the empire of the many which 
rules over us ; all things bend to the equalization of the 
advantages of social union ; the mass is heaving with the 
fermentation of unceasing change ; and society now 
exhibits that, gigantic energy, that terrible activity of the 
democratic principle, which, according as it shall be well 
or ill directed, will exalt our race to such a glorious ele- 
vation as it has never yet attained, or shake the quivering 
earth to its foundations. 

Oh Liberty, dear Liberty ! who, that looks on the 
proudest pages the muse of history ever penned, will 
gainsay thy power? Who, that follows the long train 
of splendor which tracks thy career through the starred 
regions of genius and of art, will not admire thy majesty 
and thy glory? 

Descended from the Most High, the doer of his invin- 
cible will in the cultivation of the earth and the civiliza- 
tion of its inhabitants, thou didst make thy dwelling 
place amid the wild hills and the isle-spangled seas of 
Greece. Verdure sprang in thy path. Earth gladdened 
3 



18 



in the light of thy smiles. All nature became instinct 
with life and with love. Man threw off the slough of 
barbarism, and started up etherealized under thy spirit- 
stirring touch. It was no fabled Pallas that bestowed the 
olive on Attica, no trident of Neptune evoked the war-horse 
from the struck sod, no dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus 
gave to him the builders of Thebes. Thou, Liberty ! 
thou didst breathe into the Greeks the inspiration of 
eloquence and song, thou didst kindle in their hearts the 
burning love of the beautiful and the sublime, thou didst 
make of them the heroes and the statesmen, whose 
names yet ring through the world like a clarion calling to 
victory. In the omnipotence of thy cause did the Athe- 
nians conquer on the plains of Marathon ; it nerved the 
arms of the Spartans who fell not in vain by the pass of 
Thermopylae ; it scattered the navies of the Persian in 
the straits of Salamis ; it annihilated his invading hosts 
at Platsea and Mycale. Thronged cities, temples, monu- 
ments of art, admirable even to this day in their scat- 
tered fragments, rose at thy bidding. Thy very foot- 
prints have hallowed to the end of time the land of 
memory and of taste, thine own ever glorious unforgotten 
Hellas. 

Winging thy flight to other lands, Rome bore testimony 
to thy presence, in that fiery impulse of her consuls and 
her soldiery, which, carrying her victorious eagles out of 
Italy, compelled the universe to bow down before' those 
potential symbols of triumph and of terror, the renowned 
3PQH, and established the empire of the Roman People 
wherever of nations and of lands men could be found to 
subdue. 



19 

Nor less, in modern times, did the earth witness the 
lustre of thy name, in the spirit which awakened com- 
merce, science, and the arts in the cities of modern Italy, 
won the victories of Sempach and Morat, gathered the 
merchandises of the world to the shores of Holland and 
Britain, unfurled the tricolor of the French Republic on 
half the cathedrals of Europe, and echoed the war-cry 
of independence from the heights of Bunker's Hill to the 
sierras of the Southern Andes. 

Thy chosen minister, — the right hand of thy power, — ■ 
the angel of thy counsels and thy purposes, — the organ, 
through which thou wieldest mankind, combining their 
movable masses for the execution of thy will, — is Elo- 
quence. 

Young men of America, I exhort, I implore you to 
elevate and expand yourselves to the greatness of your 
mission. It was well for Greece that the glory of Mil- 
tiades would not suffer Themistocles to sleep. Be per- 
suaded, 

The noblest trophies of mankind 
Are the conquests of the mind. 

Never, in the long lapse of time, was there an epoch 7 
which more emphatically demanded the highest order of 
oratory, which tendered to it more magnificent rewards, 
when it possessed a nobler field of usefulness and glory, 
than at this hour. Wherever Liberty is, there is Elo- 
quence. Greece, Rome, Britain, France, — all the nations 
in which popular influence has been felt, — are examples 
of the fact. But America is a living witness before us, 

Beyond all Greek, beyond all Roman fame, 



20 



to attest the importance and the dignity of a conscientious 
high-aimed cultivation of the faculty of eloquence. 

In illustration of this point, let me solicit your atten- 
tion, for a few moments, to the actual condition of elo- 
quence in modern times as compared with ancient ora- 
tory. 

We, in the United States, possess all the forms of 
secular eloquence, popular, forensic or senatorial, prac- 
tised among the Greeks and Romans. Even their pane- 
gyric orations have come to make a part of our national 
usages, with which they are in all respects highly conge- 
nial. In substance, if not in precise form, we have their 
schools of philosophy ; with this material difference in 
our favor, that, with us, elaborate oral teachings are 
applied to a wider range of topics, and are more deeply 
and pervadingly diffused through all the ranks of society. 
Beside which, the custom of popular addresses, of a 
literary character, or in commemoration of great events, 
if it be not an absolute novelty in this country, as it 
certainly is not, is yet more general, more habitual, more 
a marked feature of manners, among us, than in any 
other age or nation. In addition to all this, we have the 
new department of religious eloquence, which, though it 
found place to some extent in the Lower Empire, did not 
spring up until the decay of liberty and learning, and the 
approach of the barbarism of the middle age, had extin- 
guished or degraded all the other varieties of eloquence. 

Sacred oratory, while in both Protestant and Catholic 
Europe it is of infinite value and efficiency as the instru- 
ment of moral impression, is yet more signally important 
in the United States. Religion exists among us, not as in 
Protestant England or Catholic Spain, for the cause that 



21 

the law ordains that it shall exist, or that the public force 
upholds its existence, but because of the virtues and 
efforts of its professors and teachers, and the spontaneous 
veneration of the community. The popular principle, 
which predominates in all our institutions, has drawn 
this also into the vortex of its influence. How much 
more arduous and responsible the duty, then, of the 
sacred orator, when the maintenance of his religion, as 
well as its earnest and zealous profession, depends upon 
the efficacy of the moral and intellectual power he shall 
acquire and exert ! Never did a holier, a nobler minis- 
tration devolve upon the pulpit, — never any, which 
demanded more intense, more devoted exertions. 

In secular eloquence, there are two important particu- 
lars, and only two, in which the ancient orator possessed 
any advantage over the modern; the Athenian or Roman, 
for instance, in comparison with the American. 

In the first place, the political organization of his 
country was more favorable to the Athenian or the 
Roman. All the eminent republics of antiquity were 
cities rather than nations. Though in Athens the Areo- 
pagus, and in Rome the Senate, acted a distinct part in 
the affairs of government, yet the real sovereignty resided 
in the body of the qualified citizens, in other words, the 
People. They were not only the electors, but also the 
legislators and the judges of the Republic. Hence, when 
Demosthenes mounted the bema of Athens, when Cicero 
stood in the forum of Rome, he addressed the constituency 
of his country, at the same time that he addressed its 
legislative body, its supreme judicature, and its executive 
sovereignty. Open, for instance, the Orations of Cicero. 
You shall see him, at one time, going before the People 



22 



of Rome to defend a client accused of corruption or 
murder ; at another, to discuss the expediency of a law 
for the distribution of the public lands; at another, to 
induce the conduct of a war to be conferred on a general 
whom he favored ; at another, to satisfy his fellow citi- 
zens of the justice and propriety of the measures he was 
himself pursuing as consul. Parallel cases might be 
cited from the Orations of Demosthenes. Here, it is 
evident, the course of things is widely different. The 
people are electors merely. They control the operations 
of government, not immediately in their own persons, 
but indirectly through the representatives whom they 
choose for that purpose. In addition to which the popu- 
lation, with us, being more numerous and more scattered, 
the orator never can address himself directly to the con- 
gregated people of the United States, nor even of his 
own particular State. Hence, in this country, the orator 
cannot exercise at a moment the same visible influence 
over the general mass of his countrymen, who receive 
the matter of his discourse only in the printed report, and 
to whom the immediate impression of the force and the 
persuasive charms of his oratory are wholly lost, or 
imperfectly represented only by description or imagina- 
tion. 

In the second place, though the modern orator should 
in all other respects possess the same advantages with 
the ancient, yet he encounters a competitor, unknown to 
the latter, in the press. The influence of a great orator 
over the public mind in Rome or Athens was divided 
only with rival orators. The general multitude received 
their knowledge of public affairs, their understandings and 
their passions were appealed to, chiefly through the 



23 



medium of oral communication. True, in imitation of 
the example set them by Pericles, the eminent speakers 
of that day, as of this, prepared themselves carefully, nay 
elaborately, for the exhibitions of the forum or the senate ; 
and themselves wrote out the speeches which survive in 
attestation of their merit. But the ancients did this in 
the just and laudable regard of their own fame, to catch 
the winged words they had uttered before they should fly 
from the memory, and thus to confer durability on their 
glorious conceptions. The effect, designed to be produced 
by the speech, had been produced by it, before it was 
enrolled in the recording parchment. But the modern 
speech cannot enter and pervade the popular mind, unless 
it be committed to writing, and multiplied by the press, 
which, in its own independent efforts, divides with the 
orator the means of imparting facts, opinions, and argu- 
ments to the people. This circumstance may not have 
the effect to render the modern orator inferior to the 
ancient ; nay, if he possess the taste and habit of compo- 
sition, it affords him an additional field of public impres- 
sion; but it diminishes the consequence of spoken 
eloquence as such, in proportion as it confers consequence 
on written eloquence. 

Save in these particulars, I deny that there was any 
important circumstance to stimulate the growth or pro- 
mote the success of civil eloquence in Greece and Rome, 
for which there is not a parallel in the United States. 
We have too readily admitted the unsurpassable excel- 
lence of ancient oratory. Critics have perplexed them- 
selves in vain to account for the supposed fact, that no 
speech has been or can be composed in modern times, 
possessed of the same rhetorical beauties, and equally 



24 



effective to persuade or convince, with the old master- 
pieces. At one time they have dwelt on the more 
elaborate cultivation of the art of oratory among the 
ancients; at another, they have imagined that classic 
antiquity permitted in the orator more of passionate 
vehemence and unreasoning declamation, than the fastidi- 
ousness of modern taste can tolerate. There is nothing 
in either of the suppositions. They contradict each other. 
To the first, it is a sufficient reply, that the cultivation of 
an art or science follows upon the demand for it, and the 
argument admits our capacity to attain excellence by 
cultivation. The second, which impeaches the good 
taste of the Greeks and Romans in this particular, is 
refuted by so many severely perfect monuments of sculp- 
ture and architecture, which they reared, — by the beautiful 
compositions, in poetry, history and philosophy, which 
they have left us, — by the critical writings of Aristotle, 
Cicero, Longinus, Quinctilian and others, — and still more 
by the extant orations of Demosthenes and Cicero, the 
best of which, in the different styles of each, are admira- 
ble specimens of/argumentative business eloquence. And 
when it is so difficult to account for a supposed fact, 
it is well to retrace our steps, and re-consider whether 
the fact exists. It may be paradoxical to say so, but I 
aver what I believe, when I say, that the same ardor 
of delivery, the same sublime flights, the same pathetic 
and passionate appeals, which moved a classic audience, 
would move us. And, if time served, the position might 
be established by the citation of eminently successful 
passages in modern debate, to parallel whatever of bold- 
ness or pathos there may be in classic orations of anti- 
quity. Eloquence, then as now, was "good sense deliv- 



25 



ered in proper expression ;" calm or impassioned as cir- 
cumstances require ; formed to satisfy the taste, act on 
the passions, and instruct the understanding.^ 

This current idea, that there is more of boldness, fire 
and sublimity, in the matter or manner of ancient oratory 
than would be tolerable now, is a mere mistake, origina- 
ting in the coldness, the tameness, the subduedness of 
debate, which, until a very late period, characterized the 
parliamentary eloquence of the English. 

Writers belonging to the continental nations of modern 
Europe might easily conceive there was something unat- 
tainably great in the eloquence of antiquity. Where 
could they look among themselves for popular institutions 
and free deliberative assemblies ? No where, on a large 
scale, until the epoch of the French Revolution. And did 
they dream that without debates there could be oratory ? 
Ardent, vigorous, diversified, soul-inspiring eloquence, and 
yet no liberty ? Orators having nothing to discuss and 
nobody to address ? No wonder there was not eloquence. 
It were as reasonable to enter the cemetery caverns of the 
Upper Nile, and as you unroll the linen cerements, to 
expect that the shrivelled corpse, which has lain there a 



* In support of the idea, that more of violence and excitation distinguished the 
manner of the ancients, their supplosio pedis is commonly cited. This, it appears, 
was a gesture not rare. " Ubi dolor ? " says Cicero, — " Ubi ardor animi, qui 
etiam ex infantium ingeniis elicere voces et querelas solet ? Nulla perturbatio 
animi, nulla corporis 1 Frons non percussa, non femur 1 Pedis, quod minimum 
est, nulla supplosio ? " — But was this in fact a very extravagant gesture 1 Could 
the stamp of a sandaled foot upon the marble pavement of the temple of Concord 
or of Jupiter Stator, be an act so violent to the sense as the striking of the clenched 
hand upon a desk or table, which is a very common gesture in our public assem- 
blies ? In representing to themselves the effect of the supplosio pedis, have not our 
critics had before the mind's eye the boarded stage of a modern theatre ? 
4 



26 



dry mummy embalmed for three thousand years, shall 
walk forth in the radiant beauty and elastic animation 
of life, as to look to find, in governments without free 
institutions, oratory such as electrified the popular assem- 
blies of republican Rome or democratic Athens. — Elo- 
quence moves only in the train of Liberty. 

Something better was to have been expected of England. 
She at least had the blood of liberty in her constitution, and 
a parliament to be the theatre of deliberative eloquence. 
Yet, in the middle of the last century, there was no an- 
swer to the question of David Hume, when he signifi- 
cantly asked, — " In enumerating the great men who have 
done honor to our country, we exult in our poets and our 
philosophers ; but what orators are ever mentioned 1 Or 
where are the monuments of their genius?" — And it is 
the assured truth, that, down to that time, you can dis- 
cover, in the records of English deliberative oratory, 
scarce a single specimen which rises above the humblest 
mediocrity. Nay, it had been rather a prevalent affecta- 
tion of the English, to deem slightingly of eloquence as 
such ; and to cultivate in debate a spiritless, jejune, slip- 
shod style of speaking, no way superior to common con- 
versation. Yet what a revolution in this respect super- 
vened upon England, when the struggle between her and 
her American colonies began, and the fetters of feudalism 
fell from the limbs of Western Europe, as if melted asunder 
by a stroke of the lightning flash of Liberty ! Then, like 
the pythoness on the tripod quivering under the influence 
of the descended deity within her, the people of England 
began to be stirred by the inspiration of eloquence. They 
demanded, — what did not previously exist, — reports of the 
debates, which, owing to the narrow limits of the houses 






27 



of parliament, were to all practical purposes pursued 
with closed doors ; and Pitt, the greatest orator of his 
age, found a worthy reporter in Johnson, the greatest 
literary genius of his age. With more extraordinary 
events, and with the grander developments of popular 
freedom, appeared the brilliant names of Burke, and Fox, 
and Sheridan, and Erskine, and the younger Pitt, to honor 
England ; while the feudal institutions of France, like 
the walls of the ancient city in holy writ, were crumbling 
before the crash of the trumpet-voice of Mirabeau ; and 
you could no longer demand without reply, — " Who are 
the orators of modern Europe, and where the monuments 
of their genius?" 

Social changes, which, in Europe only half developed, 
are there gradually working out the elevation of civil 
oratory, are in full and unchecked activity in America. 
Our institutions are founded in revolution ; theirs in pre- 
scription. We discuss public questions upon the broad 
fundamental principles of natural right and original con- 
venience, as well as of convention and of practical policy; 
they are hedged in by narrow considerations of mere pre- 
cedent on file, or of make-shift and temporary expedient. 
Our government is frankly republican ; theirs monarchical 
or aristocratic. We possess freedom ; they but desire to 
possess it. If Liberty, acting upon the necessities of the 
time, could raise up a Demosthenes in Greece, a Cicero 
in Italy, it is equally capable to bring to pass the same 
thing in America. 

Our forefathers were of the men who overturned the 
monarchy of Britain, brought King Charles' head to the 
block, and reared up the brilliant and too short-lived 
English Commonwealth. They were single minded en- 



28 



thusiasts, — ready to do and die in the cause of truth, — 
valuing freedom of opinion more than country, peace or 
life, — possessing a cool, deep-seated vigor, — dauntlessly 
courageous, — in resolution immovable, — the very zealots 
of Liberty. They abandoned everything dear in the 
name of country and of home, and planted themselves in 
the midst of the wilderness, a forlorn hope on the out- 
posts of the world, that here they might be free. Men 
are sometimes disposed to deem lightly and speak loosely 
of the harsher traits in the character of the Puritans. But 
even their infirmities, their sternness of temper, their 
religious exaltation, their disregard of the graces of life, 
were the predestined agents of good in the work they 
were called to perform. Think you that men of gentler 
stamp could have laid broad and deep the earth-fast 
foundations of this mighty Republic 1 — Never. — Few and 
feeble as they were, cast in mid- winter upon the ice-locked 
shores of a bleak northern sea, a small band of self-exiled, 
homeless wanderers, they nourished in their inmost souls 
the unshakable conviction, that, under the blessing of 
God, the seed they were to sow with prayerful confidence 
of trust in Him, would send up a growth to overshadow 
the earth, and shelter nations beneath its far-spreading 
limbs. They acted accordingly. They gave to the world 
the first example of a written constitution, a genuine 
social compact, founded on the corner stone of republican 
equality. With a forecast more than human, a sort of 
prophetic inspiration, they established, in each of their 
colonies, a true popular representative assembly, such as 
no other country, not even England, possessed. They 
were free, and they were determined to continue free. 
" Great Britain protects America," said George Granville, 



29 



" and America is bound to yield obedience. If not, tell m& 
when the Americans were emancipated?" " The gentle- 
man asks," replied the elder Pitt, " when were the Colo- 
nies emancipated? — But I desire to know when they were 
made slaves?" Lord Chatham was right. Practically, 
and to all important purposes, the colonists were free 
from the moment when they turned their backs on their 
native England ; and the true question between them and 
the mother country at the time of the Revolution was, not 
whether Great Britain would acknowledge the indepen- 
dence of America, but whether America would consent to 
receive the domination of Great Britain ; whether from 
the condition of practical freedom they were content to 
relapse into that of servitude. That struggle, — blessed be 
God that he sent victory to our arms, — terminated in the 
assured independence and the constitutional organization 
of the United States. 

Thenceforth a new spectacle was exhibited to the 
world, of a people whose institutions were wholly experi- 
mental ; who, collected from every part of the world, had 
sought a refuge here from unequal and oppressive laws j 
without kings, without hereditary rulers, without a reli- 
gious establishment, without prescriptive authority of any 
kind, to balance the elements of change ; which strove to 
reconcile a democratic organization with security abroad 
and stability at home ; which made every man a free- 
holder, and coupled universal suffrage with universal 
education ; and which undertook this novel experiment, 
not in the contracted limits of a city or a province, but in 
a country broader than all Europe. 

There still pours in upon us a perpetual stream of the 
writings and the arts of Europe, nay, of its living 



30 

population, flying hither to escape oppression at home, 
and with its passions yet festering in the untented sore- 
ness of centuries of wrong. All the traits of nation- 
ality which belong to our parent nations, their opinions, 
usages, religions, are thrown here into a common heap, 
like fragments of the earth disruptured by great ele- 
mental convulsions of flood and fire, to be re-moulded 
and re-crystallized into new combinations of beauty and 
strength, by the force of the formative energies nature 
has implanted in us. It is the very spirit ©f change 
walking forth over the universe. . 

In Europe, all things are bound together by long 
prescription. To change a law, to introduce a local 
improvement, you thrust aside a multitude of interests,, 
which in their turn disturb other interests, until it i& 
impossible to foresee at what point, in the compacted 
fabric of its population and its institutions, the shock of 
the movement is to stop. You cannot touch a pillar, 
without menacing the downfall of the edifice. Here, on the 
contrary, such is the boundless field of expansion afforded 
by our vast interior resources, and such is our facility 
of adaptation to circumstances, that improvements are 
adopted as readily as conceived ; and while other nations, 
are discussing the possibility of attempting an improve- 
ment, here it is undertaken and accomplished. We 
are neither attached to nor repelled from a thing, be- 
cause it is new, or because it is old. In one thing 
only are we immovably constant ; to one object alone, 
like the magnetic needle, in all positions and all places 
ever pointing to its pole, do we hold ourselves amid 
all changes inseparably fast. We cling to liberty in 
every vicissitude. It is the bright sun, which vivifies 



31 



and rules our universe; the subtle, unseen, but ever 
present influence, which holds its parts together with 
harmonious action, widely as they move asunder, in the 
seeming of absolute self-dependence ; the everlasting 
centre, about which, though in their eccentric orbits they 
shoot off awhile towards the uttermost walls of the world, 
they still unceasingly revolve. 

Hence the irrepressible mobility, the all-comprehensive 
enterprise, the never-tiring activity of our national char- 
acter ; the spirit of improvement, of melioration, ever at 
work throughout all the ranks of society ; the presump- 
tion which dares, and daring overcomes, every obstacle ; 
the marvellous vigor, which builds up great cities, and 
plants populous states, in a single generation. History 
records the fearful celerity with which the northern bar- 
barians overran the provinces of the Roman Empire to 
slay and lay waste. We swarm across the wide reach 
of a continent, with the same irruptive rapidity of 
advancement, to create instead of to destroy ; leaving in 
the trail of our onward march, no smoking ruins of 
antique art, no provinces changed to deserts, but the 
monuments and the culture of our civilization. 

It may be, that, in these general representations of the 
condition and progress of society among us, there appears 
to the cool observer, something of the exaggeration often 
ascribed to the language and manners of our country. 
But, in a land where nature has placed no barrier to 
human efforts, and the reality of to-morrow is perpetually 
outstripping the warmest anticipation of yesterday, it is 
idle to expect the staid formality of a stationary people. 

Suffice it for our present purpose, that, thus far, the 
experiment of republican institutions, despite the evil 



32 



auguries of its enemies, has prospered, beyond even the 
sanguine expectations of its friends. The men of the Revo- 
lution have not yet ceased from among us. We ourselves 
are but the second generation of Independence. And yet 
already, in this brief period, we have risen to be the rivals 
in wealth and resources, the fearless equals in power, of 
the greatest among the nations of Europe. Yes, derided, 
scoffed at, calumniated, assailed from abroad with every 
species of obloquy, tried in the burning furnace of two 
disastrous wars, amid perils and difficulties, foreign and 
domestic, our bold experiment of a Representative Repub- 
lic, based on a Democracy, is in the full tide of splendid 
success. Point me, if you can, to any other country in 
Christendom, which has attained, — I do not say such 
palmy prosperity in so short a time, — but which has- 
attained at any time so much of the public peace and 
individual happiness, which belong to well-ordered gov- 
ernment. It cannot be done. We disquiet ourselves 
greatly, if some frantic mob, as it may happen, strikes for 
wages, destroys a building, or takes away a single life. 
We bewail the occasional excesses of party spirit. These- 
are the temporary effervescences of a free people. They 
are fit objects of lamentation and of shame. But we must 
not permit ourselves, in the resentful contemplation even 
of such untoward events, to judge unworthily of the prac- 
tical working of our institutions, as compared with those 
of any other country. What should we say, if our govern- 
ment saw itself impelled to devastate provinces with fire 
and sword, extinguishing the blaze of their dwellings in 
the blood of their population, to stay the rage of civil war ? 
Or if an act of Congress should come down from the Cap- 
itol, commanding the demolition of New York, or an iron 



33 



hail-storm of shells and red hot balls to be poured in upon 
devoted Boston ? If calamities like these had befallen us, 
if domestic violences of this enormity had occurred, we 
might well begin to think there was radical faultiness in 
our social constitutions. Yet, of such measures, executed 
to the letter, I will find you terrible precedents in the co- 
temporaneous history of the internal administration of the 
dominions of Spain, France, the Netherlands, Russia, 
even of England ; to say nothing of the foreign wars, 
which, during the same period, have carried off million 
upon million of the youth of Europe, fattened her vine- 
yards and her corn-fields with human gore, trampled her 
soil into mud under the advance and retreat of embattled 
hosts, given up her cities to sack, and her hamlets to 
conflagration? I reiterate, then, I utter it in the em- 
phasis of deep conviction, that down to this hour, we 
have conducted, with unparalleled success, the practical 
experiment of Liberty. 

Educated young men of America, ye who are to be 
responsible for the future fate of this magnificent trial, 
shall it fail in your hands ? 

Di ! prohibete minas, di ! talem avertite casum ! 

Say, shall it not rather continue to prosper, gathering 
new triumphs in proportion as our institutions expand 
themselves over the continent ? Will ye speed the gallant 
bark, freighted with the blessings of mankind, on her 
way? Do ye rally to the cause of your country, of 
your race, of the world? Speak !— But I need no 
answer from your lips. I see it in your eloquent eyes, 
beaming with the ingenuous ardor of youth. I feel it in 
5 



34 

your beating hearts, warm with the love of truth and 
honor. I know that ye will go forth out of these con- 
secrated walls, that ye will quit the scenes of your boy- 
hood, to mingle in the manlier vocations of. life, resolved 
that ye will not be wanting to the spotless fame of your 
Puritan fathers, to the hopes of the world, to the destinies 
of the American Republic. 

It is well. Consider, then, how you are to cause your- 
selves to be beneficially felt in the affairs of society, how 
you are to make your mind to be the mind of other men, 
how you are to disseminate through the world the good 
learning, the good purposes, the good principles, which 
you possess. By force ? By the authoritative control of 
the acts of society? Will you say to the less informed, 
but still the right intentioned, among your fellow crea- 
tures, — 

Sic volo, sic jubeo ; stet pro ratione voluntas 1 

I tell you it may not be. Knowledge is diffusing itself 
among the million. With it, power is passing from the 
palaces of the few to dwell in the humble abodes of the 
many. I remember, the first time I entered the British 
House of Lords, feeling a sense of disappointment steal 
over me, as I cast my eyes on a hundred gentlemen sitting 
unceremoniously scattered about on the crimson benches, 
none of them differing in appearance from myself or any 
other of the undistinguished crowd which gazed on the 
scene. I asked myself, — Can these be the proud barons 
of England, — that mighty order, which came in conquer- 
ing with the Norman, — which made and unmade kings 
at will, and gave the law to nations 1 Where are the 



35 

plumed helmets? The rich armor flashing back the sun- 
light from its burnished surface? The prancing steeds? 
The steel-clad men-at-arms? The fluttering banners? 
The trump to clang forth its point of war? The leader's 
battle-cry to rally his charging squadrons to the clash of 
the onset? All the pomp and circumstance, which in 
the old time accompanied the reality of power? — Such 
are the first emotions, which press on the thoughts of the 
beholder ; but which soon yield to strong impressions of 
the moral grandeur of the place and the scene. I saw 
before me the glorious proof, that, in the affairs of the 
world, mind had now got the partial ascendancy of mat- 
ter ; since he who rules over his fellows does it no longer 
by the high hand, and by the application of mere brute 
force; he is a moral agent, acting by and through other 
moral agents ; and he needs not panoply of proof on his 
body, nor sword and shield perpetually on his arm, nor will 
these much avail him, as the means of his greatness and 
authority. 

Knowledge, I repeat, is diffusing itself among the 
million. With it, power is passing from the palaces of 
the few to dwell in the humble abodes of the many. 
The general tendency of the time is toward the equali- 
zation of political rights. That which is a tendency else- 
where is a fact here. In other days, in other countries, 
men have been ignorant of their rights and their power, 
shackled and manacled by prescriptions, and thus held in 
subjugation to the will, and sacrificed to the passions or 
the interests, of hereditary rulers. Here, the people are 
conscious of their equal right and of their physical power. 
They heed no prescriptions. They do not yield obedi- 
ence to the son, because they happened to obey the 



36 

father. They cannot be driven by force : they must be 
guided by reason. If they err, they err under the influ- 
ence of erroneous ideas. We have many virtuous men 
among us, and wise too, who sit with folded arms, deplor- 
ing the evils of the time. I say to all such in public as I 
say in private, — Yours is but a timid virtue, a barren 
wisdom. Instead of idly complaining that affairs go wrong, 
bestir yourselves to make them straight. Feel that you 
have public as well as private duties. If by the posses- 
sion of happier natural gifts than those about you, or a 
larger education, you perceive that they err, to act upon 
their conduct, you must address yourselves to their 
motives of conduct. Thus are you to check the occa- 
sional ebullitions of popular violence, to which this, like 
every other country, is subject. Thus are you to make 
the laws of the land to be respected and obeyed. Thus 
are you to counteract the machinations of selfish disor- 
ganizes, who prefer the part of the demagogue Menes- 
theus to that of the patriot Phocion, and who direct only 
to betray. If you happen to be invested with the legal 
authority of your fellows, you hold it by their voluntary 
appointment, not by any independent tenure of your 
own ; and you can continue to hold it, or to exert it 
efficaciously, only so long as you administer it in confor- 
mity with their sentiment, unless by reason you convince 
them that your own sentiment is more for their interest, 
advantage, or honor, and so make your views to be their 
views. No matter what be the cause, which has drawn 
to you the popular confidence, whether it be your en- 
lightened and successful enterprise, your superior knowl- 
edge, your sanctity of life, your wisdom in council, your 
eloquence in debate, your valor in the field ; whatever 



37 



it may be, you are powerful only as the exponent of the 
power of the People. Representing their will, you repre- 
sent their force. 

Understand me. I come not here to utter the vapid 
party-cant of the day, which flatters men to their undoing 
with false assurances of their infallibility, which is will- 
ing the extemporaneous caprices of the hour shall take 
the place of the established law, and which seems dis- 
posed to strike out from the human vocabulary such 
words as piety, virtue, principle, good order, and to write 
down the word democracy as a general substitute for 
each of the others, just like the vain quack vaunting his 
nostrum as a panacea for all diseases. God forbid. — It 
behooves us to consider things as well as words. I have 
endeavored to lay before you a plain and simple analysis 
of society as I see it, that you may judge of the means 
by which it is to be deterred from evil and impelled to 
good. It may be resumed in a single sentence. It is 
this : — The science of administration, — by which I mean 
the indirect, as well as the direct, ordering of society, — 
is becoming every day more and more the application 
of a moral or intellectual influence to the minds of men ; 
and he that best communicates the best impressions, will, 
other things being equal, be the best able to exercise a 
salutary and lasting authority in the maintenance of good 
order, and the moral, intellectual, and religious elevation 
of society. 

Opinion, it has been said, makes men great, valiant, 
pure, anything ; and whatever it can do on the one side 
to please and flatter us, it can do the same on the other 
side to molest and grieve us ; as if every man had a 
several-seeming truth in his soul, which if he follow can 



38 

for a time render him either happy or miserable ; and so 
what is truth to one shall be rank error to another as 
wise. — Can this be ? — No. The line of social duty, in a 
civilized community, is not thus obscurely denned. There 
is, in each man's heart, a silent monitor, a speechless but 
eloquent expounder of right and wrong, which permits 
no act of his life, no resolution of his will, no spontaneous 
unbidden guest even of his thoughts, to pass unchal- 
lenged. Its judgment is the foundation of duty in reli- 
gion and morality ; it is conscience ; and its voice utters 
the oracles of truth. Is it the result of habit, education, 
temperament, the opinions we gather up in society, and 
those which are instilled into us in early life, or derived 
from books % Or do we admire virtue from a selfish con- 
sideration of utility? Or does this admiration arise from 
the sympathy of our nature with goodness in the abstract 
as a principle of fitness ? Or is there a moral sense 
implanted in us, an organic perception or inborn faculty 
of virtue, which, if not dimmed or clogged by the use of 
evil, nor overpowered and stifled by the mastery of 
corrupt passions, may serve to be the guardian of our 
lives, to sustain us in adversity by the ministrations of its 
consoling presence, and to stand watchfully beside us in 
more perilous prosperity lest we stumble and fall ? How- 
ever this be, certainly reason, if one have been so happy 
as to follow the leading of its genuine light, and have 
escaped the delusive influence of some false counterfeit 
of its lustre, may have set him in the right path. Or, 
lifting up his eyes from the book of nature to the book of 
inspiration, he may, by devout meditation of the sacred 
volume, have gained the nearer view of duty and con- 
science, which religion bestows. 



39 

And, in the ordinary fulfilment of our duty as men and 
as citizens, we are bound, in the first place, to take and 
diligently use all due means to inform us of the truth. 
With set and honest purpose to arrive at sound con- 
clusions, with appliance of all that may contribute to 
enlighten our understandings and purify our hearts, with 
catholic and fair-minded zeal to animate us, discarding 
every selfish intent, binding unholy passions as with the 
cords of a resolved single-mindedness, — thus are we to 
seek, and thus may we hope to find, the true course of 
social obligation. 

Having in good faith pursued the search of truth, it is 
our duty, in the second place, to declare it for the infor- 
mation of others ; to do this, not in a spirit of obtrusive 
proselytism, not in place or manner revolting to the con- 
sciences of men, but as fitting occasion and the exigencies 
of society require. We are bound not only to make up a 
mind, but to act in that mind when made up ; for thus 
only can we rightly discharge ourselves of that high 
commission, which the possession of reason, of education, 
and of moral and religious responsibility, imposes upon 
us. There is, even in the utterance and profession of the 
truth, a salutary influence upon the soul of the speaker. 
Zeno desired those, who called the gravity of Pericles 
pride, to be proud the same way, telling them the very 
acting of an excellent part might insensibly produce a 
love and real imitation of virtue. And silence, the sup- 
pression of opinion, is a ground, whether of reproach or 
commendation, which no man can stand upon without 
the sacrifice of his independence. Men, who thus cover 
up their sentiments, may chance, perhaps, to pass through 
life more tranquilly than others, who frankly carry their 



40 



hearts in their hands. But certainly it is not from the 
former, that the world receives its impulse ; it is not by 
them that the great problems of human life are solved ; it 
is not for the talent hid in a napkin through fear of its 
possible loss, that religion has promised its recompense. 

True, to you, as to Aristides, it may chance to be pro- 
scribed for your very virtues. Every man is liable to be 
thoroughly taught, that, in the " corrupted currents " of 
this world, passion, prejudice, and interest so bias and 
sway the judgments of men, that the good we strive 
with our whole might to do may win no renown; that 
the loudest applause or the loudest condemnation shall 
attach to a trifle or an accident. What then? — Life was 
not granted as solely for the pursuit of happiness as we 
construe it, but rather for the fulfilment of duty, whether 
in doing or suffering, whichever shall best beseem the 
infinite wisdom of God. 






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